Apple has confirmed that the dreaded 1970 glitch is no laughing matter and can actually permanently brick your iOS device.
What started off as a joke has now become an official bug, with the 1970 glitch getting the seal of approval on Apple support. The company has addressed the issue and said that it will roll out a patch in the coming weeks, though didn’t specify an exact date.
The bug in question involves changing the date on your iOS device back to January 1st 1970 or earlier (even though Apple support still lists the official date as May 1970). Due to how the Unix back-end works, doing this will set the internal clock of your device to zeroes, royally screwing up your device and throwing it into a boot loop as it tries (and fails) to divide by zero.
The only current fixes are sketchy at best and involve resetting the internal clock by jailbreaking your device or draining the battery below the threshold where the internal clock is remembered. Both are hit-and-miss with varying reports of success, though it’s fair to say that the issue lies in the Unix code-base and is probably not a direct fault of Apple themselves.
Our advice is simple, avoid Reddit and the trolls promising you a hidden ‘1970’s theme’. Instead, use common sense and don’t believe everything you read. Those of you already affected will unfortunately need to hold tight until Apple gets the patch out to their hardware. It’s worth noting that since Apple no longer supports iOS 8, you’ll probably need to update to iOS 9 if you want the fix. Though with a bricked device, this is hardly ideal…
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Via Apple
